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JP Morgan Chase and Bear Sterns

JP Morgan Chase has recently been in the news, due to a new law suit by a major insurance firm, Ambac Insurance Corporation, alleging fraud at Chase and even more egregious behavior at Bear Sterns,acquired by Chase in 2008. Documents acquired by Atlantic Monthly suggest that Bear Stern executives cheated clients out of billions by double dipping on securities sales they knew to be flawed. The lawsuit also alleges continued accounting fraud by JP Morgan Chase in an effort to cover-up the problem. In just one example of those embarrassing emails, Bear Sterns top executives crow over selling investors a "sack of shit."

Bear deal manager Nicolas Smith wrote an e-mail on August 11th, 2006 to Keith Lind, a Managing Director on the trading desk, referring to a particular bond, SACO 2006-8, as "SACK OF SHIT [2006-]8" and said, "I hope your [sic] making a lot of money off this trade."

Read more about this important bank and its role in the financial crisis in the Sourcewatch.org profile of JP Morgan Chase.

Bailout Not Over, Taxpayers Still Owed $2 Trillion While the TARP bailout programs are winding down, Center for Media and Democracy research shows that money is still due to taxpayers under the TARP. More importantly, the research shows that the U.S. Treasury Department's ten TARP programs represent less than seven percent of the $4.7 trillion disbursed by the U.S. government in an effort to aid the financial services industry. Far more money has been disbursed by the Federal Reserve to prop up the financial system than by the U.S. Treasury and those loans are still outstanding. GRAPH ONE: TARP Bailout vs. the Federal Reserve Bailout GRAPH TWO: The Double Bailout of the Financial Sector and the Housing Sector
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